"The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you."--Terry Eagleton

"It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?--Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice."--Bryan Stevenson

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Too Much of a Muchness

No, not that Russian witch!

So, the day started with Trump cancelling the summit with North Korea because his bad cop/good cop/bad cop routine (John Bolton threatened the "Libya" sanction, Trump took it back, Mike Pence repeated the Libya threat, and NK said "That's enough!") either didn't work or did exactly what he wanted it to (no, I don't think Trump is that Machiavellian). It started, in other words, with a letter so witless and poorly drafted it leaves one with the picture of Trump waiting for the phone to ring or the mail to arrive, hoping to hear from Kim. The day went on to include:

During his formal announcement on withdrawing from a planned summit with North Korea, Trump said that both South Korea and Japan “are willing to shoulder much of the cost of any financial burden, any of the costs associated by the United States in operations” if the United States is “forced” to attack North Korea.

A statement during a formal announcement which, as far as I can tell, nobody is paying attention to today. Hey, it's just Trump, amirite? A day that left South Korea (at least) saying: "Hey, man! WTF?"

South Korea's presidential Blue House seems blind-sided by Trump's cancelation of the summit: "We are attempting to make sense of what, precisely, President Trump means," says spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom.

And none of this is the story dominating the news this afternoon. That story is about how Trump's personal lawyer showed up at a meeting with DOJ representatives and a handful of Congressional representatives to hear the FBI explain when it stopped beating its wife:

Any pretense that this was about Congressional oversight (which was a thin disguise at best for a political play) blew up in smoke. This was about @POTUS interfering in our intelligence/ law enforcement system for personal gain.

Everyone in the Washington and media elite knew this but set aside all the evidence to believe that Trump is someone else and might actually take negotiations seriously and usher in a major diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea. The ultimate collapse of the summit is a valuable opportunity to try to make sure we do a better job next time, and not only take note of Trump’s lies and nonsense when his statements are proven to be dishonest nonsense but to be preemptively skeptical of new claims he makes.

I'm not holding my breath. Because, among other things, we're still acting like kneeling, the ultimate act of submission, of reverence, of respect, is more offensive than mooning or raising a middle finger. At least when it's done on a football field which, as we all know, is a holy space that cannot be denigrated by the sight of black men on bended knee. The only thing black men should be doing on a football field is slamming into each other for our entertainment and at the behest of rich white men.